himself,--

"It is long since I have wondered at nothing. I wonder now: can this
be love,--really love,--unmistakably love? Pooh! it is impossible;
the very last person in the world to be in love with. Let us reason
upon it,--you, myself, and I. To begin with,--face! What is face?
In a few years the most beautiful face may be very plain. Take the
Venus at Florence. Animate her; see her ten years after; a chignon,
front teeth (blue or artificially white), mottled complexion, double
chin,--all that sort of plump prettiness goes into double chin. Face,
bah! What man of sense--what pupil of Welby, the realist--can fall in
love with a face? and even if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty
faces are as common as daisies. Cecilia Travers has more regular
features; Jessie Wiles a richer colouring. I was not in love with
them,--not a bit of it. Myself, you have nothing to say there. Well,
then, mind? Talk of mind, indeed! a creature whose favourite
companionship is that of butterflies, and who tells me that
butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized. What an article for
'The Londoner,' on the culture of young women! What a girl for Miss
Garrett and Miss Emily Faithfull! Put aside Mind as we have done
Face. What rests?--the Frenchman's ideal of happy marriage? congenial
circumstance of birth, fortune, tastes, habits. Worse still. Myself,
answer honestly, are you not floored?"

Whereon "Myself" took up the parable and answered, "O thou fool! why
wert thou so ineffably blessed in one presence? Why, in quitting that
presence, did Duty become so grim? Why dost thou address to me those
inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has
suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has
become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart's dreams with